Duty Free Entry: Exemptions, Alcohol Limits, and Declarations

When you come back to the United States from a trip abroad, duty free entry lets you bring in up to $800 worth of goods without paying federal duty or tax, as long as you were outside the country for at least 48 hours and haven’t already claimed the exemption in the past 30 days.¹ The limit rises to $1,600 if you’re arriving from a U.S. insular possession like Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands. Alcohol and tobacco carry their own quantity caps on top of the dollar limit, and a handful of items can’t come in at all.

How Much You Can Bring In Duty-Free

The exemption you qualify for depends on where you’re coming from and how long you were gone.

$800 is the standard exemption for returning residents from most foreign countries. The goods have to be with you and for personal or household use, not for resale.²
$1,600 applies to residents returning from American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or the U.S. Virgin Islands. No more than $800 of that total can come from goods acquired outside those territories.¹
$200 is the fallback if you were abroad less than 48 hours or already used your full exemption within the past 30 days.¹

Travelers arriving directly from Caribbean Basin Initiative or Andean trade-agreement countries get the same $800 exemption, with a slightly more generous alcohol allowance.²

The 48-Hour and 30-Day Rules

Two timing conditions gate the full exemption. You must have been physically outside the United States for at least 48 hours, and you cannot have claimed the $800 or $1,600 exemption in the 30 days before your current arrival.¹ Miss either one and you drop to the $200 tier. The 30-day cooldown is designed to keep frequent cross-border shoppers from stacking exemptions.

Pooling as a Family

Family members traveling together can combine their exemptions into one group total. Four people returning from Europe can bring in up to $3,200 duty-free between them. Everyone in the group has to live in the same household, travel together, and share the same residency status, and “family” covers relationships by blood, marriage, domestic partnership, or adoption.³ One person can fill out the declaration for the whole group.

Anyone under 21 cannot contribute an alcohol exemption to the family total. That one is individual and age-restricted.⁴

Alcohol and Tobacco Caps

The dollar limit isn’t the whole picture. Alcohol and tobacco have quantity caps that apply on top of the value exemption, and going over them triggers duty even if you’re well under $800 overall.

From most foreign countries, a returning resident age 21 or older can bring:

One liter of alcohol. Nothing for anyone under 21.²
Up to 200 cigarettes, or one standard carton.
Up to 100 cigars. Cuban cigars are prohibited regardless of where you bought them.

The allowances are larger from U.S. insular possessions: up to five liters of alcohol (with no more than one liter acquired outside the territories and no more than four liters produced outside them) and up to 1,000 cigarettes (no more than 200 acquired elsewhere). From a Caribbean Basin beneficiary country, you can bring two liters of alcohol as long as at least one liter is a product of that country.²

What You Pay Over the Exemption

Anything above your personal exemption isn’t automatically hit with the full Harmonized Tariff Schedule rate. A simplified flat rate applies to accompanied personal goods: 3% of fair retail value for items acquired in most foreign countries, and 1.5% for goods from U.S. insular possessions.¹ The flat rate is a meaningful break on items like leather goods, textiles, and electronics, whose normal tariff rates run much higher. It only applies to goods you’re actually carrying. Anything shipped separately goes through the regular import process at full tariff rates.

What You Can’t Bring In

Some items are restricted or prohibited no matter how little they cost. A $5 piece of fruit can be confiscated the same as anything else.

Food, Plants, and Agricultural Products

Fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, plants, seeds, and soil are either banned or heavily restricted. USDA blocks most cattle, swine, sheep, and goat meat from countries affected by foot-and-mouth disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, African swine fever, and similar livestock diseases, along with poultry from countries with highly pathogenic avian influenza or Newcastle disease.⁵ Certain cured meats travelers commonly try to bring back, including prosciutto, Serrano ham, and Iberian ham from specific regions of France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, are prohibited in personal baggage and can only enter as commercial shipments.

Every agricultural item has to be declared, even if you’re sure it’s allowed. Declaring a prohibited item and having it confiscated at the border carries no penalty. Not declaring it does.⁶

Medications

Foreign-purchased prescription drugs are generally not allowed in if the FDA hasn’t approved them, even when the drug is sold legally where you bought it. FDA may allow an exception for a medication treating a serious condition when no effective U.S. treatment exists, but only up to a three-month supply and only if you can provide the name of a U.S.-licensed physician overseeing your care. Controlled substances are handled jointly by DEA and FDA, with DEA generally making the final call.⁷

Currency Is Separate

Money isn’t part of the duty exemption, and it isn’t taxed at the border. But if you’re carrying more than $10,000 in currency or monetary instruments into or out of the country, you have to file FinCEN Form 105. The threshold is the combined total for a group or family, not per person. “Monetary instruments” includes traveler’s checks, money orders, bearer-form securities, and negotiable instruments endorsed without restriction.⁸

Failing to report can bring civil and criminal penalties up to $500,000 in fines and ten years in prison, plus seizure of the full amount.⁹ Deliberately hiding currency to avoid reporting is a separate federal crime, bulk cash smuggling, carrying up to five years in prison and forfeiture of the currency and any container or vehicle used to conceal it.¹⁰

Declare Everything

Every arriving traveler has to make a customs declaration, either on CBP Form 6059B, through the Mobile Passport Control or CBP Link apps, or at an Automated Passport Control kiosk.¹¹ The declaration has to describe every item you acquired abroad and its purchase price in U.S. dollars. Keep your receipts. If an officer questions a value, the receipt is your best defense against an inflated assessment.

The penalty for not declaring is designed to outweigh whatever duty you were trying to skip. Under federal law, any article you fail to include in your declaration and don’t mention before CBP starts inspecting your bags is subject to forfeiture, plus a penalty equal to the item’s value. For controlled substances, the penalty jumps to $500 or 1,000% of the value, whichever is greater.¹²

The money isn’t even the biggest cost for frequent travelers. CBP routinely revokes Trusted Traveler Program memberships, including Global Entry, NEXUS, and SENTRI, over declaration violations. An undeclared bag of fruit can wipe out a membership that took months to get. Reinstatement happens, but it isn’t automatic.¹³

If you’re unsure whether something needs to go on the form, put it on the form. Declaring a prohibited item costs you the item. Hiding it can cost you the item, a fine equal to its value, and your trusted traveler status in a single trip.

1
eCFR. 19 CFR Part 148 – Personal Declarations and Exemptions
2
eCFR. 19 CFR 148.33 – Articles Acquired Abroad
3
eCFR. 19 CFR 148.14 – Family Declarations
4
U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Family Grouping of Exemptions for Articles Acquired Abroad
5
USDA APHIS. Meats, Poultry, and Seafood
6
U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Bringing Food Into the U.S.
7
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Personal Importation
8
U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Money and Other Monetary Instruments
9
FinCEN. FinCEN Form 105 – Report of International Transportation of Currency or Monetary Instruments
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 31 USC 5332 – Bulk Cash Smuggling Into or Out of the United States
11
Federal Register. Revision – Customs Declaration CBP Form 6059B
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 19 USC 1497 – Penalties for Failure to Declare
13
U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Trusted Traveler Program Revocations and Reinstatements